Dover Christ Church Academy is prepared to expand following plans for nearly 6,000 homes to be built at Whitfield over the next five years.

The school in Melbourne Avenue has just undergone an £10.9m overhaul.

With the Whitfield Urban Expansion project starting to take shape, an extra influx of 11-year-olds are expected to need places.

Iain Smith, director of finance and operations at the school, said: “The academy has been kept fully abreast of the plans for urban expansion and does indeed have the capacity for further expansion.

“The rationale behind class sizes will ensure that rather than the class size exceeding Department for Education recommendations the number of classes would grow.

“The impact of significantly higher pupil numbers would be recognised by the Education Funding Agency and the academy would attract additional funding to support the recruitment of additional of staffing.”

A spokesman for Kent County Council said: “No financial contribution was sought for secondary school provision for Phase 1 of the Whitfield expansion, for 1,400 units because, at the time the application came forward, there were sufficient places to meet the need.

“An application has recently been submitted for Phase 2 of the development, for 1,190 units.

“We are currently preparing our assessment and are likely to be seeking contributions towards secondary school expansion.

'We are currently preparing our assessment and are likely to be seeking contributions towards secondary school expansion.' - KCC

“However, we need to point out that it is not only Dover Christ Church that admits pupils from this area, as the grammar schools and church schools do also.”

The first phase includes homes developed by Abbey New Homes at Bowman’s Place, Sandwich Road, already under way.

A new roundabout on the A256 will be the first part of this development. The second phase is to incorporate Parsonage Whitfield and Shepherd’s Cross neighbourhoods, with up to 410 and 780 homes.

The first phase will see one primary school created in Whitfield and the overall plan is for three extra primary schools to cater for the increase in houses.

Whitfield and Aspen School in Mayfield Road is the only primary school in Whitfield at present.